News

Venture capital research firm Pitchbook had some somewhat sobering news about investing in the Great Lakes region in a report published this week. For the first time in six years, the number of deals by VC firms in the Greak Lakes is on pace to fall short of the previous year's number, according to Pitchbook.

In fact, VC investors have completed only 183 deals so far in the US Great Lakes region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin) in 2015, compared to 309 last year. Since 2012, the region has averaged roughly 300 deals per year. Pitchbook went on to find that of the 632 investors active in the Great Lakes region since 2012, only 142, or 22%, have completed a deal in the last 6 months.

Illinois, not surprisingly, received the highest percentage of deals (35%) and the largest percentage of capital invested (46%) among all the Great Lakes states.

To get a sense for the VC firms that have been investing most frequently in the Great Lakes, Pitchbook ranked the investors by the number of deals made since 2012. A number of Chicago firms cracked the list, including the Pritzker Group (2), Chicago Ventures (3), Hyde Park Venture Partners (9), and JumpStart (10).

Here's the list of the top 20 VC investors in the Great Lakes since 2012, and their number of deals:

Lakewest Venture Partners

Lakewest Venture Partners is an affiliate of Lakewest, Inc., a real estate and private equity company located in Chicago. It is led by Buzz Ruttenberg, David Mann and Jonathan McCulloch and was formed to pursue seed and early stage investment opportunities primarily in Chicago. Our investments and participation in companies can range from passive $50,000-$100,000 investments to those in excess of $1,000,000 with board involvement. Our primary investment capital is sourced in-house which makes our decision-making process straightforward and swift. We also operate a fund raised from private investors for additional investment capacity.